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Safari memory leak?

EugW

EugW

macrumors P6
Original poster
Jun 18, 2017
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Earth (for now)
I noticed with just one tab open to MacRumors.com, Safari was seriously lagging / beach balling. It turns out it was using over 2 GB RAM alone. I closed the window and opened it up again, and same thing, and it eventually got up to 2.68 GB, before I closed Safari completely. After opening it up again, it's less than 300 MB with one tab, and no lagging / beach balling.

Screen Shot 2022-07-11 at 7.20.48 PM.png


I've noticed this a few times with Safari. Relaunch Safari and everything is fine.

Screen Shot 2022-07-11 at 7.22.26 PM.png


Is this a common issue or just me? 2014 Mac mini with 8 GB RAM and 512 GB NVMe SSD, running Monterey. I know 8 GB isn't a lot but my RAM usage is in the green and swap usage isn't particularly high.
 
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Safari is doing some wild things these days. I’ve had something as little as an Apple chat window open get a high memory usage error. Things like Twitch and other video apps as well can keep eating memory and has been happening since Monterey release.

I switched over to Chrome and just use heavy adblocking/tracking filters. It’s a shame cause I enjoy Safari but I want to use what works.
 
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Sheepish-Lord said:
Safari is doing some wild things these days. I’ve had something as little as an Apple chat window open get a high memory usage error. Things like Twitch and other video apps as well can keep eating memory and has been happening since Monterey release.

I switched over to Chrome and just use heavy adblocking/tracking filters. It’s a shame cause I enjoy Safari but I want to use what works.
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Yeah, I prefer to use Safari, but if this persists, I may have to switch to using Chrome more.
 
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A just did a huge upgrade to Monterrey 12.6 (was in 12.4) and to Safari 16.0. Now I do start to work in a page (this one, also twitter, gmail etc.) and the page starts to grow in memory and slow down. Safari itself does not grow, but the pages do. Will have to switch browser, if could not solve this. Is virtually unusable right now.
 
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I temporarily switched to the Orion browser. But there is still a third (backup) Epic Browser on the machine.
 
I have found that when I have macrumors.com open in a pinned tab, my Safari memory usage (as much as 16GB) goes up greatly and slows down Safari. When I remove the pinned macrumors.com and reopen Safari, I have no problem with memory usage. I have experimented with other webpages and no problem. I am running a late 2021 MacBook Pro (16 inches) with MacOS 12.6.
 
steve knight said:
I have a record 95 gigs.
View attachment 2089082
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This is a new record for sure. Also, your Kindle is eating a lot of memory to... displaying ebooks?

From time to time I take a look on System Update, waiting for Safari updates... nothing so far. My guess, they are working on it. Meanwhile I am using Chrome because it still runs ok and convenience reasons. I still think Safari 15 is the best browser overall, followed by Opera that unfortunately have low market share.

Also, I have interacted with people from Apple Discussions, did a lot of tests. Safari 16 will only work fine in a new user. But unlike other apps, is not possible to delete stuff in my user because Safari is protected - I mean, not as regular admin user, they won't guide me in a homemade solution.

So if you take your device to an Apple assistance service, physically, they will fix your Safari (in theory). Not my case because my Macbook pro is unsupported. But you that have spend your money in a newer one, should do it. Or create a new user, because you hate yourself...
 
Safari is a dumpster fire sadly and they don't care, I'd move on and use a better browser (almost every other available).

1665243358250.png
 
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ChuckJ said:
I have found that when I have macrumors.com open in a pinned tab, my Safari memory usage (as much as 16GB) goes up greatly and slows down Safari. When I remove the pinned macrumors.com and reopen Safari, I have no problem with memory usage. I have experimented with other webpages and no problem. I am running a late 2021 MacBook Pro (16 inches) with MacOS 12.6.
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Yes they've been having significant memory leak issues with pinned tabs throughout the entire Monterey cycle. Now with Ventura betas, same issue. STP latest, same issue. They don't care.
 
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It is the same issue even today with Ventura 13.4.1. I really want to use Safari but the memory leak is crazy. Makes me go back to Edge every single time.
 
EugW said:
I noticed with just one tab open to MacRumors.com, Safari was seriously lagging / beach balling. It turns out it was using over 2 GB RAM alone. I closed the window and opened it up again, and same thing, and it eventually got up to 2.68 GB, before I closed Safari completely. After opening it up again, it's less than 300 MB with one tab, and no lagging / beach balling.

View attachment 2028752

I've noticed this a few times with Safari. Relaunch Safari and everything is fine.

View attachment 2028751

Is this a common issue or just me? 2014 Mac mini with 8 GB RAM and 512 GB NVMe SSD, running Monterey. I know 8 GB isn't a lot but my RAM usage is in the green and swap usage isn't particularly high.
Click to expand...
I’ve seen that same behavior, specifically with MacRumors forums, on Firefox and Chrome. If you keep a tab open for an extended period of time the site will keep allocating memory. I’m not sure you can call it a Safari memory leak. It seems related to the site instead. There are other sites that frequently grow their RAM usages. Gmail is one. I’ve seen others. It’s a good practice when you find a site that does that, to close and reopen its tab at least once a day.
 
Last edited:
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Tagbert said:
I’ve seen that same behavior, specifically with MacRumors forums, on Firefox and Chrome. If you keep a tab open for an extended period of time the site will keep allocating memory. I’m not sure you can call it a Safari memory leak. It seems related to the site instead. There are other sites that frequently grow their RAM usages. Gmail is one. I’ve seen others. It’s a good practice when you find a site that does that, to close and reopen its tab at least once a day.
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But only Safari does that. Other browsers dont.
 
Enjoylife1788 said:
But only Safari does that. Other browsers dont.
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Not true. I’ve seen this same behavior and specifically with forums.MacRumors.com on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. I’ve seen similar behavior with other web pages like google mail that get into the multi-GB over time.
 
Tagbert said:
Not true. I’ve seen this same behavior and specifically with forums.MacRumors.com on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. I’ve seen similar behavior with other web pages like google mail that get into the multi-GB over time.
Click to expand...
This is other issue. For me and many users only Safari is leaking. Also a macOS new user will solve the problem that is probabaly some corrupted file that can´t be fixed, some Safari files are not allowed to be modified ever (as Apple stated).
 
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